#FITNESSAPPLIED

Rotation rounds out my list of 7 functional movements, and it's easy to overlook because it shows up in the smallest moments — reaching back to grab your seatbelt — as much as the biggest ones, like a golf swing, a tennis serve, or a baseball throw. At its core (pun intended), rotation uses your abdominals and spine stabilizers to twist your torso around your hips, and adding your legs, hips, and shoulders into the pattern only increases the torque you can generate. A simple

Think about climbing a tree as a kid. That's pulling, the sixth movement on my list of 7, and it's built on a combination of upper-body muscles working together to bring your body toward something fixed. It's also the pattern I see people lose fastest as they get older, to the point that some struggle to stand up out of a chair without using their arms to haul themselves up. Without deliberate pulling work, you quietly lose access to a lot of life. My own regular activities —

Lifting a box onto a shelf above your head, rearranging the living room furniture, and a defensive lineman driving a blocker backward all have something in common: they're pushing movements, the fifth on my list of 7. Anything you do that moves an object away from your body counts, and it turns out we push in more situations than we ever give ourselves credit for. The direction you push determines what gets trained: push something straight out in front of you and your chest d